Bad habits are contagious

Eddie Howe was quite down after the exit from the FA Cup. His players had fallen into bad habits and he felt that the individual errors were contagious. A change of player line up hadn't taken the performance forward, and Howe was even thinking that he might have to think differently about these kind of matches in future.

Lys Mousset may have to wait a long time for another opportunity after his FA Cup outing.

But I remember Eddie saying similar things in previous years about early exits form the FA Cup. The rotation simply doesn't work, if the players you have to come in are not able to produce the same quality as the first team. Bournemouth are conceding far too often and are playing themselves out of games at the moment.

Eddie says he can't keep saying the same things and not seeing a change in what the players are producing. It is worrying, if he believes he can't see a reaction having giving warnings about what the players had to watch out for against Brighton. Standing off the opposition and not looking out for players like Duffy on set pieces were mistakes that Howe had clearly told the team to be aware of in pre-match briefings, but sometimes the players don't react well enough.

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While Steve Cook and Andrew Surman had the experience to try and help others through the game, I felt it was David Brooks that was the real leader on the pitch for Bournemouth, as he never stopped trying and his quality stood out above the rest. Bournemouth's players need to take more inspiration from him as many of the players don't look in the same class at the moment.